elevator to the gallows (spine 335)

Elevator to the Gallows
Directed by: Louis Malle
1958
Spine #335

Elevator to the Gallows - which Louis Malle directed in 1958 when he was (preposterously) just twenty-four years old - is best described as a conventional crime-thriller dipping its toes into the nascent waters of the French New Wave. These latter elements are what the film tends to be celebrated for today, but the story is very much rooted in the tightly-plotted fatalism of film noir. The initial domino, not surprisingly, is murder. Julien Tavernier (Maurice Ronet) concludes a normal Saturday at the office by shooting his boss - wealthy industrialist Simon Carala (Jean Wall) - and making it look like a suicide. Unfortunately, his carefully orchestrated crime is thwarted when he’s forced to re-enter the building to tie up a loose end… and ends up trapped in the elevator between floors after the security guard shuts down the power for the weekend (let’s just say this isn’t one of the more cryptic titles ever bestowed upon a film).

This is a juicy setup… but it doesn’t take long to realize that it doesn’t make for much of a movie on its own. After all, there’s not much for Tavernier to actually *do* in his predicament, other than brood, poke about the elevator paneling in a vain attempt to escape, and smoke cigarettes at the furious rate of your average 1950s Frenchman. Which brings us to the second - and by far the most iconic - part of the story, which concerns Florence (Jeanne Moreau)… who’s Carala’s wife and, more importantly, Tavernier’s lover. Assuming Tavernier lost his nerve when he fails to show at their scheduled rendezvous (and thinking she’s been jilted when she sees his car pass with a young girl hanging out the window - we’ll get to that momentarily), the despondent Florence takes to wandering the streets of Paris as conventional form dissolves into the stylistic equivalent of improvised jazz. Both figuratively - as Moreau is captured with a startling level of realism, her face freed of the customary layers of makeup and illuminated entirely by the natural light cast by nocturnal cafe signs and shop windows - and quite literally, thanks to an indelible score composed by none other than Miles Davis. Davis’s involvement was a stroke of serendipity and the lonely ache of his trumpet is impossible to describe (it evokes the same feelings of dreamlike sorrow that Vangelis later achieved with “Blade Runner Blues”). The melancholy shots of Moreau’s rain-lashed face linger in the memory; they suggest Parisian romanticism and longing at their most timelessly cinematic.

Of course, Maurice Ronet marooned in an elevator and Jeanne Moreau strolling glumly through the night still don’t quite make for a fully-realized movie, which brings us to the third side of the narrative triangle… angry delinquent Louis (Georges Poujouly) and his shopgirl sweetheart Véronique (the adorably cherubic Yori Bertin), who impulsively steal Tavernier’s car and take it for a joyride (they’re like the bratty, high school freshmen version of Belmondo and Seberg in Breathless). Youthful indiscretion takes a dark turn, however, resulting in further violence and a chain reaction of misunderstandings and mistaken identity. We’re meant to take a rather dim view of these callow lovebirds - Louis, endlessly posturing and quick to anger, Véronique punch-drunk on her own romantic naïveté (she practically swoons at the idea of a suicide pact as the logical solution to their predicament) - but the film questions if Florence and Tavernier, for all their relative sophistication and emotional maturity, are really any worthier of our regard. Whereas Louis is rash and reactionary, Tavernier is coolly methodical… their specific crimes deliberately juxtaposed… and yet, their fates don’t become intertwined by accident. Love, it would seem, just makes a mess of everything. It binds the two couples together, a veritable agent of endless chaos.  

There are many who seem to feel that, minus the Miles Davis score or the vulnerable beauty etched onto Moreau’s performance, Elevator to the Gallows would be viewed as a forgettable - even unaccomplished - effort… but that does a disservice to the elegance of the film’s plotting. Malle’s technique is impressive for someone so young. The movie is nothing if not a consistent triumph of plant and playoff. Scene composition reflects the instincts of a filmmaker twice his age. Lino Ventura eventually shows up as a homicide detective with a nose for bullshit and it’s a relatively minor performance in terms of his filmography, yet his oak-like stolidity is always welcome. The final half-hour is fiercely propulsive; when we reach the denouement, the final puzzle piece falls into its waiting place so neatly and effortlessly, all you can do is incline your head in admiration. “FIN” has become a symbolic punchline of European arthouse cinema, but in this instance, it feels like a stiletto blade slipping right through our ribcage and piercing the heart.